PI Community Communications

PI Chairman Karsten Schneider’s observations on the importance of communications – not just in bits and bytes, but person-to-person and organization-to-organization

The huge success of PI technologies is based on communication. Of course, the technology itself shared in this, too. Indeed, the quality and widespread global use of PI technologies would never have been possible if the PROFIBUS developers had not had an outstanding character trait – the absolute determination to communicate with one another. Only in this way could there be unanimous consent for a sustainable, reliable, vendor-neutral solution in the form of PROFIBUS and PROFINET.

The path to this was, and is still, not always easy. When it comes to details, in particular, it is not out of the ordinary for intense discussions to occur. But the effort always pays off. Members of PI are collaborating closely in over 40 working groups. But we also pay close attention to our users’ needs. It is therefore no wonder that many initiatives from user groups have resulted in development of successful technology, such as PROFIsafe and PROFIenergy.

In recent years we have intensified our efforts to make contact with other organizations in order to serve our users even more fully. The FDI project is a prime example of how users, manufacturers, and user organizations can cooperate. The OPC Foundation and PI have also recognized each other as cooperation partners for years. This cooperation is now becoming even more intense in the context of Industrie 4.0. Industrie 4.0 also set the stage for the latest cooperation between CLPA (CC-Link Partner Association) and PI.

You can read about the technological developments emerging from these partnerships in an upcoming PROFINEWS. And you can see how these partnerships are being put into practice at Hanover Fair and other events. We invite you to plan to visit us in Hall 9, Booth 68 at Hanover Fair to create new communication networks.

Karsten SchneiderPI Chairman

Editor’s note: Karsten emphasizes the importance of the developers of the PI communication technologies. This issue of PROFINEWS carries that importance to the developers of products that use the technologies with stories from the embedded world trade-show, about developer classes, and with the PROFINET Commander developer tool.